It was only when he attacked an 11-year-old schoolgirl on a bus that Lee Read was arrested, but not before he had molested several women on the London underground. His modus operandi would be to sit next to them, cover their thighs with his overcoat and then use it as a cover to touch them inappropriately. Yet, despite cctv footage catching the father-of-three doing this several times during just one month of Central line commuting, only one adult victim of his assaults appears to have reported him. And then only after he did away with the coat to grab under her skirt, before following her out of the carriage.

Read's sentencing, reported in the London Evening Standard, came just ahead of the report from the End Violence Against Women coalition which found that an astonishing 43% of young women in the capital have experienced sexual harassment in public spaces over the past 12 months. That's nearly half of all women between 18 and 34. Admittedly, only a small proportion of that harassment involves the sort of physical contact that has landed Read with a jail sentence. Most of it is "non-contact" – you know the sort of thing: wolf whistles, staring, indecent exposure. Funny, eh, that the British have such a great reputation for reserve and respect for personal space?

There is evidence that it starts young, too, with earlier research by the coalition finding that one in three girls report unwanted sexual contact in school.

The Brits do have a reputation for failing to take any sort of harassment seriously. I can almost hear the radio reports of the Yougov survey already: "Come on love, no one died. Aren't you more worried about paedophilia? And anyway, it must be good to attract attention." Hard to answer that one really, although I do like the poster produced by Lambeth council a while back that stated: "Flirt/Harass: real men know the difference."

There will be some who believe that us feminazis take all this stuff way too seriously. More fun-loving/sophisticated/sorted Europeans [cut adjective to fit national stereotype] don't worry about the odd wolf whistle. They would if it became threatening, though – something the ubiquitous "ciao bella" of many Italian men never seems to. How else to explain why twice as many women as men do not feel safe using public transport in London?

Having said all this, I'm glad campaigners aren't arguing to make more of this behaviour criminal. The radio presenter is right – nothing died, apart from the ability of women to not feel attacked while going about their daily lives. Instead, End Violence Against Women wants an awareness campaign. When Hollaback, the anti-street harassment group, set up a UK operation two years ago, the idea that women would shout out when the victim of sexual harassment was unheard of. Julia Gray, co director of the organisation, said: "I was told, 'good luck with that'. The wider community will never believe that women should speak up for themselves." Since then, there has been a slew of stories in which women have publicly shamed alleged abusers – remember the woman on the New York metro? Earlier this year, to celebrate International Women's Day, Hollaback was featured in both the Sun and the Mail, not entirely positively, it has to be said, but as a way of reaching a "wider community" it was a pretty significant moment.

Most mornings, as I sit on the Northern line, I'm confronted by a poster saying: "That newspaper you're reading is rubbish". Maybe just replacing it with one saying: "harassing women is rubbish" would work instead?